H.120

Last updated
H.120
StatusPublished
Year started1984
Latest version(03/93)
Organization ITU-T
Committee VCEG (then: Specialists Group on Coding for Visual Telephony)
Related standards H.261, H.262, H.263, H.264, H.265
Domain video compression
Website https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.120

H.120 was the first digital video compression standard. It was developed by the COST 211 European research project and published by the CCITT (now the ITU-T) in 1984, with a revision in 1988 that included contributions proposed by other organizations. The video turned out not to be of adequate quality, there were few implementations, and there are no existing codecs for the format, but it provided important knowledge leading directly to its practical successors, such as H.261. The latest revision was published in March 1993.

Contents

Stream format

H.120 streams ran at 1544 kbit/s for NTSC and 2048 kbit/s for PAL. Version 1 (1984) featured conditional replenishment, differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM), scalar quantization, variable-length coding and a switch for sampling. Version 2 (1988) added motion compensation and background prediction. [1] A final edition (without new technical content) was published in 1993 as a result of the creation of the ITU-T to replace the prior CCITT standardization body.

Problems and knowledge gained

H.120 video was not of good enough quality for practical use. Digital signal processing operations were minimized to enable real-time operation. Since differential PCM works on a pixel-by-pixel basis, reducing the bitrate sufficiently required lowering the spatial and temporal resolution, and the quantization of pixel differences was coarse. Frame memory storage was expensive at the time, further motivating a lowered spatial resolution.

Each field of standard-definition video was subsampled vertically to 143 lines and horizontally to at most 256 samples per line (a 2:1 reduction vertically and about a 2.8:1 reduction horizontally). In moving areas, the number of samples per line was reduced by another factor of 2 using a quincunx sampling pattern. Difference values were coarsely represented using a quantization table with only 16 values of pixel differences. Fields were sometimes skipped to reduce temporal resolution as well.

It became clear to researchers that to improve the video quality without exceeding the target bitrate for the stream, it would be necessary to encode using an average of less than one bit for each pixel. This would require groups of pixels to be coded together. This led to the use of the discrete cosine transform in codecs that followed H.120, such as H.261, the first practical video encoding standard.

Related Research Articles

In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information. Typically, a device that performs data compression is referred to as an encoder, and one that performs the reversal of the process (decompression) as a decoder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lossy compression</span> Data compression approach that reduces data size while discarding or changing some of it

In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size for storing, handling, and transmitting content. The different versions of the photo of the cat on this page show how higher degrees of approximation create coarser images as more details are removed. This is opposed to lossless data compression which does not degrade the data. The amount of data reduction possible using lossy compression is much higher than using lossless techniques.

MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s without excessive quality loss, making video CDs, digital cable/satellite TV and digital audio broadcasting (DAB) practical.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Image compression</span> Reduction of image size to save storage and transmission costs

Image compression is a type of data compression applied to digital images, to reduce their cost for storage or transmission. Algorithms may take advantage of visual perception and the statistical properties of image data to provide superior results compared with generic data compression methods which are used for other digital data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motion compensation</span> Video compression technique, used to efficiently predict and generate video frames

Motion compensation in computing is an algorithmic technique used to predict a frame in a video given the previous and/or future frames by accounting for motion of the camera and/or objects in the video. It is employed in the encoding of video data for video compression, for example in the generation of MPEG-2 files. Motion compensation describes a picture in terms of the transformation of a reference picture to the current picture. The reference picture may be previous in time or even from the future. When images can be accurately synthesized from previously transmitted/stored images, the compression efficiency can be improved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video codec</span> Digital video processing

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">G.711</span> ITU-T recommendation

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advanced Video Coding</span> Most widely used standard for video compression

Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distribution of video content, used by 91% of video industry developers as of September 2019. It supports a maximum resolution of 8K UHD.

H.261 is an ITU-T video compression standard, first ratified in November 1988. It is the first member of the H.26x family of video coding standards in the domain of the ITU-T Study Group 16 Video Coding Experts Group. It was the first video coding standard that was useful in practical terms.

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Α video codec is software or a device that provides encoding and decoding for digital video, and which may or may not include the use of video compression and/or decompression. Most codecs are typically implementations of video coding formats.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intra-frame coding</span>

Intra-frame coding is a data compression technique used within a video frame, enabling smaller file sizes and lower bitrates, with little or no loss in quality. Since neighboring pixels within an image are often very similar, rather than storing each pixel independently, the frame image is divided into blocks and the typically minor difference between each pixel can be encoded using fewer bits.

Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sub-band coding</span>

In signal processing, sub-band coding (SBC) is any form of transform coding that breaks a signal into a number of different frequency bands, typically by using a fast Fourier transform, and encodes each one independently. This decomposition is often the first step in data compression for audio and video signals.

A video coding format is a content representation format of digital video content, such as in a data file or bitstream. It typically uses a standardized video compression algorithm, most commonly based on discrete cosine transform (DCT) coding and motion compensation. A specific software, firmware, or hardware implementation capable of compression or decompression in a specific video coding format is called a video codec.

ZPEG is a motion video technology that applies a human visual acuity model to a decorrelated transform-domain space, thereby optimally reducing the redundancies in motion video by removing the subjectively imperceptible. This technology is applicable to a wide range of video processing problems such as video optimization, real-time motion video compression, subjective quality monitoring, and format conversion.

JPEG XS is an interoperable, visually lossless, low-latency and lightweight image and video coding system used in professional applications. Applications of the standard include streaming high quality content for virtual reality, drones, autonomous vehicles using cameras, gaming, and broadcasting. It was the first ISO codec ever designed for this specific purpose. JPEG XS, built on core technology from both intoPIX and Fraunhofer IIS, is formally standardized as ISO/IEC 21122 by the Joint Photographic Experts Group with the first edition published in 2019. Although not official, the XS acronym was chosen to highlight the eXtra Small and eXtra Speed characteristics of the codec. Today, the JPEG committee is still actively working on further improvements to XS, with the second edition scheduled for publication and initial efforts being launched towards a third edition.

References

  1. Overview of International Video Coding Standards (preceding H.264/AVC) (PDF) (Gary J. Sullivan, ITU, 2005)